


a quiet kind of agony

by ainewrites



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, because that's what love is isn't it, soft and gentle and bittersweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-13 22:37:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14757605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ainewrites/pseuds/ainewrites
Summary: Have you ever loved someone so much your chest hurt?Have you ever loved someone so much that you can't imagine life without them?Have you ever loved someone to the point of distraction, but not been able to tell them?-How do you tell your best friend that you love them?





	a quiet kind of agony

It doesn’t start a sudden realization that sweeps her off her feet. It doesn’t start with her suddenly realizing that she’s in love with her.

It’s not sudden.

She just looks up one day, and Holtzmann is laughing, and she realizes that maybe she’s been in love with her the entire time.

-

Erin hasn’t had the best track record with love.

It’s always ended in either heartbreak (for her), or a sort of biting indifference, which is somehow worse. The emptiness that comes after, no relief, no pain, just emptiness because it confirms what she already knew. She didn’t care.

Her previous boyfriends have been parent-approved and society-approved, but she didn’t really like any of them.

And now, she thinks, she didn’t like any of them.

Because Holtz comes into the room and she’s smiling and it makes Erin _hurt_ because she wants so badly for this to become _something_ but she can’t bring up the courage to make the move.

Erin loves Abby, Erin loves Patty, and they’re her best friends, Holtz is her best friend, but she looks at Holtz and it’s like her entire world is revolving around that beautiful, brilliant, infuriating woman and it makes her _ache_.

Have you ever loved someone so much it made your chest hurt? Have you ever loved someone so much that all those unsaid words linger in your chest, filling up your ribcage like animals trying to claw their way out?

-

Erin would never describe Holtz as pretty.

Kevin is pretty, but Holtz is striking, Holtz is handsome, Holtz is beautiful.

Holtzmann dances to the music blaring on the radio and grabs Erin’s hand and pulls her in circles around the lab, and the walls spin and the whiteboards blur and Erin is laughing and Holtzmann is laughing and she is so, so beautiful and Erin wants to kiss her.

Erin wants to kiss her. It’s a new realization, one that settles somewhere in her stomach and warms her from the inside out.

Holtzmann doesn’t know. Holtzmann just goes about her life. Holtzmann digs through garbage cans and makes things explode and dances in the rain, and laughs the entire time, and she is infuriating, and she is beautiful and Erin sometimes feels like she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to keep all this longing inside her.

But Holtzmann one of her best friends, Holtzmann is her family, and she can’t bear the thought of loosing her just because Erin feels like her entire body is being set alight every single time Holtzmann enters the room.

-

The romance novels she used to read always described love as _heavy_. Arousal and heat and passion, all forming some sort of weight inside you.

But it’s not like that.

This is starbursts in Erin’s veins and clouds in her head, and it’s like Holtzmann cradles the sun in the palms of her hands. This isn’t heavy. This is light, and this is color, and it _hurts_.

Erin loves Holtzmann so much, feels it every time they make eye contact across the room, feels it in Holtzmann’s every smile, in her every touch, and she can’t imagine life without this.

It’s a quiet, burning sort of agony, one that Erin almost can’t stand, one that she almost can’t live with, but the agony of loosing her because of Erin’s feelings is a pain far, far worse.

-

They both sleep at the Firehouse, sometimes. They all have bedrooms tucked away, and one of them should be on call at all times anyways, but it’s not uncommon for them both to stay. Because their lives revolve around their work and both of them don’t know when to stop.

Erin must have fallen asleep, because suddenly Holtz is in front of her with a hand on Erin’s wrist and a smile on her lips.

“Erin,” she says, and Erin is tired and she’s not thinking and she’s so utterly in love.

She kisses her. Quick and hard, and then she pulls away.

Holtzmann blinks, and Erin is already stumbling, backtracking, apologies already spilling from her lips.

Holtzmann kisses her.

Quick and hard, open mouth against open mouth, hands tangled in hair and fisted in the back of hoodies, and Holtzmann is laughing and Erin falls even more in love.

-

Holtz has fairy lights strung up above her bed and a row of succulents against the window and clothes scattered across the floor. She flops down on her bed, the lights casting a constellation of thousands of tiny stars across her shoulders, and she is beautiful.

Erin loves her, has loved her possibly from the very beginning.

“Did you know?” she asks.

“I hoped,” Holtz answers, and Erin doesn’t kiss her. She just hugs her tight, and they sit there, clinging to each other, curled on Holtzmann’s bed in the middle of the night and it hurts, but it’s a good hurt, this time.

-

How do you tell your best friend you love her?

How do you tell your best friend that you’ve loved her for what feels like centuries?

Holtzmann dances to the music blaring on the radio and grabs Erin’s hand and pulls her in circles around the lab, and the walls spin and the whiteboards blur and Erin is laughing and Holtzmann is laughing and she is so, so beautiful and Erin wants to kiss her.

So she does.

And then they dance, fingers entwined, and Erin is laughing and Holtz is laughing and Erin loves her so much that it aches but it’s an ache of _knowing_ , now.

It wasn’t a sudden realization.

It’s not sudden.

She just looks up one day, and Holtzmann is laughing, and she realizes that maybe she’s been in love with her the entire time.

And now, they dance, and love is a sun cupped between their palms, and it is beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> am I working out my feelings through writing? haha no, why would you ever think that?


End file.
